Ken Billman, PhD

About This Member:

Dr. Billman has 58 years of successful professional endeavor in all aspects of advanced technology development. He brought to this effort innovation and broad areas of scientific expertise as expected of a physicist, but with the care for detail and engineering realism that stems from his extensive experience as an experimentalist. He successfully performed at many advanced technology levels: research scientist (both theory and experiment) and PI systems engineer, PM project manager, GL group leader, PM/DPM program manager and deputy, CHSci Chief Scientist and BC branch chief. His experience is summarized below for his positions at the Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC, 1989-2013), the TITAN Corporation (TC, 1984-89), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, 1979-84), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, 1967-79), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1959-67) Physics Department.

After retiring from Lockheed Martin (LM) in 2013, Billman became an expert independent consultant to the Schafer Advanced Technology Group in Albuquerque, NM and in 2014 opened his own consulting and product development company, KB Energy & Photon Systems (KBE&PS).

He joined LM in 1989 as a LM Fellow and first served as ChSci of the SDIO’s GBFEL-TIE pgm; later as PM/PI of its Neutral Particle Beam CEED pgm; then as PM of Laser Assisted Guidestar Optical System (LAGOS) which taught LLNL adaptive optics and installed, using our LM equipment, a system in Lick Observatory; then PM/PI of the LM Airborne Laser (ABL) Concept Design which provided an innovative design of laser beam control systems used even today. Billman served as Dep.PM/ChSci of the ABL PDRR weapon system development pgm, which in 2009 demonstrated the first long range laser kill of a boosting TBM.

Prior, he was manager/chief technologist of the San Francisco Bay Area (Photonics) office of TITAN Systems. Programs there included serving as PM/ChSci of SP-100 SETA to DoE San, and SETA to DOE San and Headquarters Inertial Fusion pgm; PM/ChSci of DARPA’s Ultra-High Efficiency Holographic Space Energy Conversion pgm; Invented and proposed to the SOR Director a Novel Nd-YAG Na Guidestar Laser; PM/PI chief designer for the NASA Langley Space-Qualified Laser Transmitter Module for the NASA LITE pgm which later was the first laser to successfully demonstrate orbital operation.

Prior to that position, he spent five years managing the Inertial Fusion Program at EPRI. Here he sponsored major contracts to develop concept designs for laser, heavy- and light-ion reactors. For the prior 13 years he was with NASA, first with the Electronics Research Center and when it closed, at the NASA Ames Research Center as manager of the Lasers Branch and the Advanced Space Energy Concepts Group. Here he led a group of 40 professionals in the NASA Laser Program in development of lasers, optics, and power systems to remotely power satellites using laser power transmission. He also developed the SOLARES system for world energy supply that consisted of orbital solar reflectors that provided continuous high-noon sunlight to selected solar conversion ground sites. Prior to that, he began his professional career with an 8-year appointment as a Physics Professor at MIT, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, directing theses, and performing research as lead of the Soft X-Ray Lab, performing charge neutrality and micro-eV electron experiments in the molecular beam lab, and concluding with a classic neutron neutrality experiment at the MIT reactor in collaboration with (later awarded) Nobel Laureate Dr. Clifford Shull.

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The CO2 Coalition was established in 2015 as a 501(c)(3) for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.